A local authority has been criticised after spending nearly £630 to translate a local housing newsletter into Urdu for one person.
Crawley Borough Council converted its 12-page quarterly Homelink into the language spoken in Pakistan and India after a single resident complained they couldn't read it in English.
Details of the £627.60 payment were released this week by the Tory-run council in West Sussex.
A council spokesman confirmed that just one copy of the translated newsletter was printed.
It immediately sparked anger among other local residents, who received the original newsletter in April and May which was sent to 8,107 council tenants.
Peter Innes, 43, said today: ‘How can the council justify spending £630 on translating a magazine for just one person?'
‘The magazine is routinely just put in the bin by tenants and the advice in it is usually less than enlightening, so to my mind it is just a total and utter waste of money.’
Another local Claire Sanders, 29, said: ‘It’s all very well translating the magazine into another language, but where does it end?
‘If I phoned up and said I only spoke Klingon or Gaelic would they translate the magazine for me?’
A council spokesman confirmed that the Homelink magazine was translated in Urdu after a request by just one tenant, but said: ‘It was useful to do this as there was an article about welfare benefit changes.
‘The Urdu translation was for the Spring Homelink newsletter on the request of the tenant.'
He said that it was 'unlikely' that the magazine would be printed in Urdu in the future but said future decisions to print it in different languages would be taken on a 'case-to-case basis'.
Asked whether only one edition of the Spring edition was printed in Urdu, the spokesman said he would 'have to check' the records before commenting.
The world's most expensive magazine.
The world's most expensive magazine.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: The world's most expensive magazine.
Insanity.
Your collective inability to acknowledge this obvious truth makes you all look like fools.
yrs,
rubato
Re: The world's most expensive magazine.
So now he assumes that because the guy is Indian or Pakistani he must be on benefits?A council spokesman confirmed that the Homelink magazine was translated in Urdu after a request by just one tenant, but said: ‘It was useful to do this as there was an article about welfare benefit changes'.
Why is it that when Miley Cyrus gets naked and licks a hammer it's 'art' and 'edgy' but when I do it I'm 'drunk' and 'banned from the hardware store'?
Re: The world's most expensive magazine.
It would have been cheaper to hire some one to go over there and read it to them.
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.
Re: The world's most expensive magazine.
Stop making sense! That's just not the English way!
